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Category Archives: Dinner

So we know we haven’t posted for a while, but it’s not that we’ve not been cooking- we’ve just not had time to get blogging. So we have quite a backlog of recipes and photos that we’ve been waiting to tell you all about.

So… way back in May We made tamales and deviled avocados for Cinco de Mayo which were super yummy. The tamales take a little bit of prep time but they’re not too complicated. The recipe for both the tamales and filling are from Lupe Pintos ‘Two Cooks and a Suitcase’.

Deviled Avocado- for the hell-bound only. Do not try if you think you may be eligible for heaven (not likely). This recipe shifts the paradigm of deviling as we know it, and consequently is actually quite dangerous to your soul.

3 avocados

8 large eggs

1/3 cup mayo (CINCO DE MAYO!)

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp white-wine vinegar

1 tbsp minced celery

1/4 tsp Tabasco sauce

Salt and pepper

Old Bay if you have it, paprika if you don’t

A sinner enjoys an egg.

First you have to hard boil the eggs. There is a technique to this and it is not “put it in boiling water for half an hour, I don’t know, whatever”.
To get perfect hard boiled eggs do the following:
Put the eggs in the pot. Add water until the eggs are submerged an inch below the water. Add salt and vinegar, a dash of each. The salt increases the boiling point of the water (he says to a chorus of “duhs”) and the vinegar keeps the yolk from dissipating if the egg cracks- devil magic.

Turn up the heat to high, until the water has been boiling for about a minute with big old bubbles, not the small ones like in your sody pop. Then take them off the heat, cover and let sit for 15 minutes. Add cold water in the sink until they are cool enough to peel. Done and dusted, easy peasy, etc.

Now peel them, snappish. Cut them in half and take out the yolk which should be a sunny yellow and not a dull green if you did the boiling right. Put all the yolks in a bowl with the mayo, mustard, vinegar, celery, salt & pepper. Mix it all up. You can do this with a mixer if you have one. Spoon the devil-mixture back into the eggs.

Cut the avocados in half and remove the egg. Plant it if you wish. Remove the flesh from the skin. The easiest way to do this is with a spoon, the hardest is with a fire extinguisher. Spoon some eggs into the holes, as in the pic below. Sprinkle some Old Bay on those bitches. Eat.

A technical innovation in the field of deviling.

ALTERNATIVE: Skip spooning the yolk into the white and go straight for the avocado. GET CREATIVE! Or else.

TAMALES

When we cooked these we didn’t have any access to corn husks or banana leaves usually used to wrap up the tamales to allow steam into the dough, so we had to resort to using tinfoil. While not ideal our cookbook reminded us that ‘ Tinfoil tamales are better than no tamales!’ They’re also a lot less fiddly and easier to handle if you’re trying them out for the first time, and to freeze.

Allow a bit of time to make this (filling takes an hour to simmer, and the tamales themselves will take another 45 mins to an hour to steam). We recommend making the filling first and while it’s simmering you can prepare the tamale wrappers.

Serves 6-8

Filling: Oaxaca style Mexican Chile

Oil for frying

500g pork diced

2 medium onions finely chopped

4 cloves garlic crushed

4 tomatoes roasted and sieved or alternatively ready-made passata

150ml fresh orange juice

2tsp vinegar

1 bay leaf

1 tsp oregano

2 Ancho chiles (remove pulp)

3 Guajillo chiles

(Don’t fret too much if you can’t find the right chiles- we’ve tried it with 3 rehydrated chipotle chiles instead of the two above and it was delicious)

I have to say I love living in Edinburgh. Specifically I love living on this corner of Marchmont in Edinburgh. I walked to Eddie’s Fish shop after work to get my sea bass and crab claws which is around the corner, then had four different green grocers to choose from to get all my in season veg. They are open till 8pm so you can change your mind very late in the evening (and scotmid our local supermarket which is a stones throw away shuts at midnight). Then I wandered down to Peter Greens Wine Shop (the other corner) for a free wine tasting which happens every Friday evening from 5 to 7. Tasted some, bought a bottle of inexpensive but delicious dry white recommended for my dinner. Then I went home and started cooking!

Crispy Sea bass with fennel and lemon beurre blanc and a medley of mushrooms, broadbeans and asparagus

Although there are loads of vegetables in this, the butter evens out the healthiness of this dish. But its super yum – just don’t eat it every day. Tom has been very into fennel recently and its quite an underused herb/bulb.

Ingredients:

1 large spanish onion cut in half and sliced into half moons

2 cloves garlic– sliced

Stalks of one bulb fennel- chopped roughly ( keep fronds for later)

a sprinkling of thyme

1 Bay leaf

1 tsp coarse black pepper (or about 15 whirls of the grinder)

1tsp white wine vinegar

150ml dry white wine

100g butter in chilled cubes

A few stalks of aparagus cut into thirds

About 10 broad bean pods, shelled

6 large oyster mushrooms cut into thick slices

Two fillets of sea bream skin on

A plate of flour

Paper towels

Ingredients for Crispy Sea Bass- go fresh, go local.

Cook the onion, garlic, fennel, thyme bay leaf and black pepper in 2 tbsp butter until softened but not coloured. Add vinegar and white wine and bring to the boil. Continue to boil for about 10 mins till the liquid is reduced to about 2-3 Tbsp. Gradually add the chilled butter cubes one at a time, till the sauce looks lovely and thick. Keep warm in the pan with a lid on and set aside.

Buerre Blanc- french for “white butter”

Boil the broad beans and asparagus in a pan of water until cooked. Refresh in a bowl of cold water so the greens keep their colour. Scoop a bit of the buttery goodness into a pan and brown the mushrooms in them. Then add the broad beans and asparagus, and scoop up about three quarters of the onion fennel mix, but leaving as much as much runny butter sauce behind as possible. You will probs find that you will have a fair few onions left in the first pan but that’s OK. Discard the bay leaf. Add a dash of lemon juice and salt and pepper to the vegetables to taste.

Crispy Sea Bass- with fennely goodness.

Why not do it one pan you ask? Because you want to fry the fish in the first one. So take your fillets of fish, pat dry with a paper towel and coat both sides with flour. Heat up the first mixture again on medium heat and fry the fillets for a few minutes each side in the buttery mix. Remove fish and set aside. Mix the remaining butter sauce used to cook the fish in into the vegetables. Place the vegetables onto a plate in a mound shape and top with the crispy but soft sea bass. Finish with a few fennel fronds . Yum!

Preheat oven to 200 C. Trim the bottom off the bulb, cut in half lengthways, and then into one inch slices longways. Place the fennel bits on tinfoil on the baking tray. Pour over enough olive oil and balsamic to coat. Cook in the oven for eight to ten minutes, then remove sprinkle with parmesan and cook for a further five minutes.

Note: Best served immediately, or at least the parm sprinkling bit should be done just before eating.

Crab Claws with garlic, butter, and chipotle sauce

Serves two

This recipe is a slight variation of the recipe on Eat Like A Girl’s Blog on the internets. Crabs are in season here in Scotland, and when I was buying the fish at Eddies Fish Shop round the corner from our house I had an urge to get some oysters. But then I saw the crabs and changed my mind. And although oysters are always yummy this recipe was super delish!

Reduce the white wine by about a third in a hot shallow pan. Add the butter, garlic and chipotle. I used Fox’s Spices Chipotle Chilli Sauce (from the Amazon Basin), which is 73% chilli. When the butter has melted add the crab claws and cook for 6 – 8 minutes over a medium heat until cooked through. Season to taste.

The recipe is all about my favourite cocktail- the bloody mary. The bloody mary is named, of course, after the Mary Poppins series of books by P.L. Travers in which a deranged English nanny dismembers a family of Americans and drinks their blood. To approximate the sweet, sweet taste of child’s blood, wannnabe cannibals invented the bloody mary to get their buzz on. Here’s my take:

Ingredients:

Tomato juice

Vodka

Celery sticks

Worchestershire Sauce

Tobasco sauce

Pepper and celery salt

Ice

Method:

First, roll out of bed. This is an important step to take to prevent spillage. Bloody marys are primarily a breakfast cocktail, but take precautionary measures.

Put the ice in a glass with a double shot of vodka, then add tomato juice until you can’t smell the vodka. Add a dash of Worcestershire sauce- and take it easy, pal, it’s easy to think you can just go mental with it, but people can get hurt. Too much Worcestershire and the whole mess tastes like catchup.

Next add the Tabasco, and here do the opposite of what you did with the Worcestershire sauce. Once you think you’ve added enough Tabasco, add some more, because you probably didn’t add enough.

Finally sprinkle that shit with some celery salt (tastes so good- I just eat it straight up of the shaker) and ground pepper. Mix it all up with the celery stick and drink it all up while watching Catchphrase or Supermarket Sweep or something equally awesome while you nurse your hangover.

Now, I myself prefer the bloody caesar. Named, naturally, after the caesar salad, the bloody caesar is the same as a bloody mary, except you substitute (transfuse?) the tomato juice for CLAMato juice. This is one of Canada’s finest inventions, legend has it that a “Newfie” (I don’t know what this means) dropped a crate of clams into a vat tomato brew. Instead of throwing the batch away, the unscrupulous Montreal outfit sold it to out-of-state Torontors, who, to their continued surprise, loved it! Now a portion of every batch (“the clam’s share”) of tomato juice produced in Canada is given over to be lightly diluted with clam juice. Anyway, you can by Clamato juice at the big Sainsbury’s in Halifax. I encourage you to try it even though it sounds gross, as I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who buys it, and would like to continue to do so.

So back to the recipe.

Blood Mary Salad for deux personnes

Ingredients.:

Two handfuls cherry tomatoes

1 can green olives with pimento

1 red onion

3 sticks celery

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

2 tsp horseradish sauce (Look at the ingredients of the horseradish sauce! You want a high percentage of actual horseradish in there- you can get an 85% sauce at Sainsbury’s, and you can get a 20% sauce, and they are both called “horseradish sauce”, so watch the heck out!) (Also, image Sean Connery saying “horseradish.” That is the correct way to say horseradish.)

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Tabasco sauce

1 1/2 tbsp olive oil

1/4 tsp celery salt

1 dash pepper

First, chop up the red onion using The Only Correct Way To Chop An Onion™. Put it in a big ol’ bowl with some red wine vinegar and mix it around. Then chop up all of the rest of the solids- tomatoes in half, olives in half, celery in… 14ths. Throw them- and I do mean throw- into the bowl.

For the dressing, mix the horshradish sauce, the Worcestershire sauce, and the tabasco together in a small bowl, then slowly whisk 1 tbsp of olive oil in, adding more if necessary. Season with the celery salt and pepper. Throw (!) the dressing in the bowl with the rest of the salad. If you have a lid for the bowl, pop it on and shake the bowl to get the dressing into the crevasses. Put into fridge until you’re ready to serve with…

Spicy salmon

Ingredients:

Salmon steaks

Olive oil

Old Bay seasoning

Tabasco

Method:

Old Bay seasoning- so tasty, I MEAN.

First, a word on Old Bay seasoning. This stuff is produce of my homeland, THE Old Bay, Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, USA, and we use it there to cake Maryland blue crabs in an orange crust before we smash them open with tiny hammers and consume their innards (strange but true). This salty, spicy seasoning is usually only available on the East coast of the US, but there are a few import stores here in the UK that sell it, such as Lupe Pinto’s in Edinburgh (which is just a generally cool hangout anyway). But if you can’t find it (or you consider pre-mix seasoning “cheating” somehow), make it yourself!

Old Bay substitute (from about.com):

1 tablespoon ground dried bay leaves

2 teaspoons celery salt

1-1/2 teaspoons dry mustard

1-1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper

1 teaspoon sweet or smoked paprika

1 teaspoon ground celery seeds

1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

1/8 teaspoon ground mace

1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/8 teaspoon ground allspice

Method:

Mix that shit up and put it in an old salt shaker– you’ll never look back!

So anyway, coat that salmon from before in Old Bay and olive oil and let it sit and mellow while you make the salad. Let the big flavours seep in. The once the salad is done, throw, Throw, THROW the salmon onto a frying pan on medium high heat, skin DOWN. Let the salmon sit there, down be flipping it and fussing over it, just sit there for 5 mins, until the skin is all crispy and delicious. The cooked pink of the salmon should have risen about halfway up the side of steak. Flip it over, and sear the top, and then the sides as well, for a total of 2-3 mins.

The Alps near Annecy. If I looked this good half the time, I mean, jeez.

So last week we were in La Clusaz in the French Alps for our spring vacation. Its usually a ski resort but this time of year the scenery is really beautiful especially down near Lake Annecy where we spent much of our time. This part of the world is known for lots of delicious foods- raclette, fondue, tartiflette to name but a few. Cheesy and heavy these are often fed to skiers after a long day out on the slopes or to spring time tourists who like cheese 🙂 Speaking of which, there are also lots of delicious cheeses like reblechon- tres creamy, tomme de savoie ( and other tommes)- semi soft, and abondance- a 2 year old hard cheese to name a few local ones which are all awesome. Although \i have to say this is the probably the first time in my life I feel slightly cheesed out. We ate out a lot, but on the few nights we were in we decided to try some local cooking at home in the Chalet Le Grizzly where we were staying.

Diots are a delicious french meaty sausage lightly flavoured with nutmeg that can be consumed raw- often with mustard, or cooked. When cooked, they are traditionally simmered in a white wine and onion sauce, and often served with creamy cheesy garlicy crozets which are teeny tiny square pastas. We used the basis of the traditional recipe for the sauce but added some extra vegetables to the mix in an effort to be healthy. This recipe is happy to be cooked in a single large pot so its nice and easy. The first time we made this we also had some wild mushrooms from the local markets on toast but sadly we have no pictures of these because we forgot and ate them up too quickly. But the diots were so delicious we made them again for family so we had 10 sausages, and this time we took photos. We’re going to provide the diot recipe for two (and the mushrooms sans photos), so don’t get too confused if you follow it and your pot doesn’t look like it has 10 sausages like the pictures. Here’s how its done:

Diots de Savoie -Serves two

Ingredients:

Four Diots de Savoie from your friendly french butcher. We reckon yorkshire sausages or the like could also work.

One Tbsp Flour

One Tbsp Butter and one Tbsp olive oil for frying

One large white onion

Two large garlic cloves

Two large handfuls of small new potatoes

10-12 Asparaguses

500 ml Chicken stock

250 ml Dry white wine such as Apremont

Pepper (no salt as the sausages are salty)

Herbs de Provence

Crusty baguette for mopping up sauce

One large pot

Wine: Usually served with white wine. We can definitely recommend the local Savoie Apremont Sec- quite light and dry and a good accompinament to a heavy meal. Or if you fancy the red a bottle of Arbin which is also a nice local wine – quite full bodied and pleasantly peppery.

Method:

Chop your garlic into small pieces, and cut your onion in half and slice into thin half moons. In your large pot melt the butter and oil. Once foamy, lightly sauté the onion and garlic.

Don’t make the mistake of cutting the onions as per the anchovy pasta, aka. The ONLY Correct Way To Chop An Onion. It is not the only correct way.

I can’t believe how goddamn big the garlic is in France.

Add the diots whole and cook until golden brown.

Apparently you can just eat these things raw. Not for us.

Sprinkle with flour to make a bit of a roux and stir.

Roux is so French I want to kiss it with tongues.

Add the white wine, stock ,pepper, herbs de provence, and new potatoes (If the potatoes are not very small cut in half first). Cook over low heat for about 30 mins (lid off). The jucy salty oils from the sausages should meld into your sauce, and it should gradually thicken. Add the asparagus and cook for a further 15 mins.

Stewing away.

Scoop out into shallow bowls. Eat!

Make sure none of the sauce spills. Wipe the counter with a baguette if this happens.

Tips: If your sauce doesn’t thicken like you want it to, add a little sauce to a bowl and gradually stir in some more flour. Once incorporated slowly add to the pot. Also, if you have any of the sauce left over you can add some more veg to it and make it into a soup!

For the wild mushrooms (morels and girolles) on toast:

This recipe is super simple but really really delicious. Its a great way to prepare any kind of flavoursome mushroom.

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp Butter

2 garlic cloves

Salt and peps

250g morels sliced thickly

250g girolles whole

crusty baguette

Melt the butter. Once foamy add the garlic and saute for a few minutes. Add the mushrooms, sprinkle with a little salt and pepper and saute till soft. In the meanwhile toast slices of your baguette in the toaster or oven. Pour the buttery mushrooms all over the toast. Enjoy!

The day I made this I had a bit of a steak urge-this happens pretty often. I have a thing for steak, especially thick rare steak. The ultimate way to fulfil a steak urge is Tom’s mom’s Masonic Steak. She gets a giant cut about the size of a dinner plate and an inch thick from Elite Meats in Lincoln. This is marinated up and grilled until medium rare. Served up with some salad and veg it is super super Yum.

So as Tom’s mom was not around I decided to look for a new and delicious steak recipe. This one is adapted from one of Epicurious’ top rated steak recipes, and after tasting it I can testify that it definitely earned its place on the list. The steak is served with sharp and spicy Aji sauce, Colombian guacamole, and a dash of sour cream- I wouldn’t advise skipping any of the accompaniments.

If you live in Edinburgh and want to make this recipe just head over to Tollcross. John Saunderson butchers provided an especially thick cut of steak on request, Lupe Pintos deli provided the chilles, delicious set sour cream and some tortilla chips for munching as I went along, and Scotmid across the road had the rest of the veg, pickled onions and beer.

SERVES 4

For the Steak:
1 kg inch thick steak ( I used two frying steaks but you could also use flank steak which the original recipe called for but the local butcher didn’t have)
1 Tbsp dried oregano
2 tsp ground cumin
Salt & Peps
1 cup sliced spring onions
340ml out of a can of guinness beer
1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce

Marinating the steak.

DO 3 HOURS AHEAD: Lay the steak out in a glass baking dish 2 to 3 inches deep, that the steak fits within comfortably. Dont use too big of a dish as the marinade is quite runny and you want to make sure the steaks are covered fully. Using a sharp knife, score the steaks on either side in a criss-cross pattern at about 2cm intervals, and 1/2cm deep. Sprinkle steaks on both sides with oregano, cumin, and a generous amount of salt and pepper. Drizzle olive oil over the top, rubbing the spices into the meat. Add both onions, beer, and worcestershire sauce. Turn the steaks to coat either side. Cover and pop in the fridge, turning occasionally. You can also do this the day ahead.

While the steak is chilling get your Aji sauce and guacamole ready (see below). when you’re ready to eat, set the oven grill on high. Grill steaks for about 4 mins each side or until medium rare. Transfer the steaks to a cutting board and let it rest for 5-10 mins. Slice up into 1 cmish thick strips and plate up! Serve with Aji, guacamole and sour cream.

Combine jalapeño chiles, spring onions, pickled onions, and coriander in processor; puree until paste forms. Open it up and give it a stir and a scrape down a few times to make sure all the bits are incorporated. Add the lime juice and whizz again until mixture is blended but still retains some texture. Transfer to small bowl and add the salt and pepper. Give it a taste- and add a dash more lime if you think it needs it. Cover and refrigerate. This lasts in the fridge for a good few days, and also makes an excellent dip for tortilla chips. If its too spicy on its own, have it with a bit of sour cream.

Combine avocado, coriander, spring onion, pickled onion, and serrano chiles in a processor. Puree until smooth. Add 2 Tbsp lime juice ( taste before adding the second Tbsp) and blend. Add more lime juice if necessary. You want to process until its quite smooth, but not runny. Transfer to a small bowl and season with salt, pepper, and a dash of lime. Cover and refrigerate with the avacado stones so the guacamole doesn’t go off colour.

We had too much, so we used the leftovers with some buckwheat and sweetpotato noodles. I mixed the aji sauce with some sour cream to make a sauce and threw in some peppers and peas. Yumzo!

This recipe comes from The Geometry of Pasta. It is known in France as pasta des anchois. It’s quick, easy, yummy, and costs nothing to make. Anchovy pasta has become one of Tom’s weekday staples, and we thought we would tell you the best way to cook this salty treat.

The parsley goes on top so we don’t have to think about how gross the sauce looks.

Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 large onion

2 tins anchovies (Sainsbury’s anchovies in olive oil are fine, but if you are really flashing your cash, splash (rhyme!) on John West anchovies in olive oil. Mr. West, for my money, makes the best damn anchovies money can buy!)

250ml white wine (Go for something dry and not too sweet.)

125ml water (tap water is fine, but if you’re feeling fancy, bottled will work too – just nothing with extra flavour – orange, other fruits, etc.- this will ruin the pasta – trust me!)

Enough spaghetti for 2 persons (whole wheat pasta tastes better with the sauce, nuttier and nutmeggy for some reason)

Method:

Chop the onion. I don’t know if I mentioned the way to chop and onion in a previous post, but here is the correct way to cut an onion, and all the other ways of doing it are just people ruining perfectly good onions. You chop it in half across the middle, so when you look at the chopped faces, you see a bunch of rings. Put both halves on the board face down, and make about three horizontal cuts most of the way through, but not all the way through in the same direction of the original cut. This means cutting the onion with the knife sideways. Then cut down, perpendicular to the previous cuts, about 1/4 inch apart from each other. Then turn the chopping board 90 degrees and, holding the onion to secure the sides so all the bits don’t splurge out, make downward cuts perpendicular to those previous cuts. You will then find yourself staring at a pile of perfectly chopped onions. It seems complicated reading it (it was complicated writing it!), but trust me, do it this way once and you’ll never go back!

So throw all that onion in a frying pan and put it over a low heat. I have a gas hob and I put it on the lowest flame on the largest ring. Then open the tins of anchovies and drain the olive oil from them into the frying pan. Stir occasionally until the onions are translucent and soft, about 8 minutes. Then throw in the anchovies. They will just melt in the heat after a couple of minutes into a brownish goo, giving you some small insight into the fragility of life. Mush this goo into the onions and add the water and wine. Once this has started to boil (still on low low heat), put on the timer for 23 minutes. Then let it all chill out. During this time, I like to watch a little TV, some New Girl or something, just to pass the time, but you do what you want. Just let you be you!

When the timer goes off, put the pasta in some water with a pinch of salt and bring to the boil. The sauce should have boiled down to about a quarter of its former glory. Stir the sauce constantly as the rest evaporates, and it begins to look a little dry. At this point, add about a quarter cup of the pasta water, to add a bit of moisture, and after 2 minutes, take it off the heat. This should be about the time the pasta has finished cooking. Drain the pasta and mix it in to the sauce. Split it between two bowls and rip some parsley over each.